On the trail of an exotic 'native'

Long considered an
"exotic" species, wild horses occupy a sort of borderland, caught
between the mythology of their origins and the reality of their
plight today. This is the subject of a new documentary, El
Caballo, by Drury Gunn Carr and Doug Hawes-Davis. Known
for their hard-hitting documentary films,
Varmints (HCN,10/26/98: Varmints) and
Killing Coyote (HCN, 7/31/00: Killing Coyote),
Carr and Hawes-Davis approach wild horses with a lighter, albeit no
less powerful touch.

The documentary opens like a
Clint Eastwood film, with horses galloping across the desert
against the backdrop of a waning sun. The film's basic tenet is
that all equids, including horses, evolved in North America and
existed here until the end of the Pleistocene Epoch 8000 years ago,
when they mysteriously disappeared. Therefore, when Spanish
explorers arrived with horses in the early 1500s they were
essentially reintroducing a native
species.

"Equus caballus was
here 1.7 million years ago," says Jay Kirkpatrick, a wildlife
biologist with Zoo Montana. "I've always thought that when they
(wild horses) returned, they really had come
home."

Viewed as an exotic species by the U.S.
government, wild horses had been slaughtered as vermin until well
into the 20th centry, when they were finally given some degree of
protection under the 1971 Free-Roaming Wild Horse and Burro
Act.

If wild horses are the film's protagonists,
the BLM plays the villain, with its dark choppers swooping down on
terrified herds, and its hired hands harassing them into trucks.
These scenes are hard to stomach, the horses wide-eyed and
hysterical, violently resisting capture.

Lest the
viewer be traumatized, Hawes-Davis and Carr offer minor comic
relief with clips from the BLM film, Welcome Home, Wild
One!, an almost farcical account of the Adopt-a-Horse
Program, the BLM's primary strategy for reducing competition
between wild horses and domestic livestock. While BLM officials
tout the program as a success, critics claim that rather than
providing comfortable homes for horses, the BLM may be supplying
raw material for the burgeoning international market in horse
meat.

El Caballo offers no
easy answers. While hinting that wild horses deserve to be managed
as a native species, the documentary shies away from addressing
exactly what this would mean. It's clear that wild horses belong on
public lands, but how and to what extent is for the viewer to
contemplate.

As Kirkpatrick says, "I don't see
any biological issues anymore; they're political or economic or
social or cultural, and these poor animals like wolves and bison
and horses are just symbols for the different sides to rally
around." El Caballo is available on VHS video
for $35 from High Plains Films, P.O. Box 8796, Missoula, MT 59807
(406/728-0753). Call for a screening in your area.